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Back to Sanity ... The Only Course

After your disbelief in reality succumbs to the horror of what has
actually happened, the first instinct is fear. As we learn that the
immediate threats have passed, the fear slowly dissolves into anger.
Our first numb thought is to immediately retaliate against anyone and
everyone who has wished us harm or celebrated our injury. Revenge,
swift and certain and complete.

The only wisdom that can seep through the misery and sorrow and anger
is to see justice done. Those who have caused this enormous pain must
be identified and destroyed.

Our distress is only multiplied when we realize that those who were
directly responsible for this horror are already dead. Apparently, a
few dozen Taliban fanatics who were both well trained, coordinated
and committed to suicide missions against the heart of America's
wealth and power.

It seems certain that all of our nation's destructive power will be
focused against those who are complicit in this crazed attack on tens
of thousands of innocent people. The only issue is how wide the
retaliation can be applied and still fall within the province of
justice. Retribution can be measured, but there are no bounds to the
craving for revenge. An eye for an eye isn't enough.

Individually, beyond the grief, we can only commit ourselves to
continue our lives. If the objective was to crush our will and
destroy our achievements, we must resume whatever normality is
possible and apply our efforts toward preserving and improving the
lives we lead. We can never concede to them the victory of abandoning
our pursuit of achievement and success.

The best we can do is show the flag. Every home, every business,
every institution, should fly the stars and stripes as a symbol of
our pride and resolve.

For the coming days and weeks, we will all be disabled by our anger
and horror at the dimensions of this atrocity. It won't be easy to
recover, much less resume our lives, much less make reasonable
appraisals of the causes. Our national agents will respond, we hope
with a deliberate and conscientious application of force. It will
take much longer to identify the measures that may be required to
avoid such a catastrophe in the future. Many will find it heartless
and cold to appraise those measures so soon after such a malicious,
epic and historic tragedy. The only answer is that it must be done
and the first voices set the tone for future discussion and thought.

There is no doubt that these were terrorist attacks. The intent was
terror and the means were incidental. The objective was to attack the
most prominent symbols of American wealth and power. The purpose was
to instill fear and damage our will to continue the pursuit of
personal happiness and the expansion of our ideas and ideals around
the world. Fear for our security can cripple our productive efforts
and promote self-destructive instincts to prevent risk by abandoning
our ideals. It is essential that we avoid any new restrictions on our
liberties, the primary power that makes our success possible. We
cannot abandon our basic principles in pursuit of safety. We will
lose both and our enemies will have won.

We know that the tools of one of our most important freedoms, the
liberty to move around the world, were converted to weapons of
massive destruction. In spite of extreme measures to prevent it,
major airliners were commandeered by a few people with small arms. We
may never know for certain, but it seems likely that they were armed
with weapons that passed through the metal detectors at several
airports. Plastic knives would be sufficient, given the absence of
any means of self-defense for any of those aboard the plane. Some
will speculate that the weapons used were firearms, and their answer
will be tighter restrictions on airline access and more comprehensive
metal detection. They would be badly misguided.

The problem is not that weapons were brought on board by terrorists.
The problem is that no weapons were allowed to the pilots, stewards
or passengers on board; a fact that has been broadly advertised to
every terrorist everywhere in the world. Rather than attempt the
impossible guarantee of no risk, we must facilitate self-defense.
Nothing could be more disruptive of airline hijacking than to have
armed operators and passengers. Rather than trying to prevent small
arms on airliners, we would be better to require them. No airliner
should leave the terminal without a minimum of three armed crew
members. Tear down all the detectors and welcome all passengers with
concealed weapons on board as guardians of our transportation
liberties.

This measure would preclude more extreme responses, which should
nevertheless be considered.

At least one of the airliners flew for almost a half hour after the
hijacking, changing its heading directly for New York City. Under
those circumstances, it would certainly have been better to destroy
the airliner than to allow it to proceed. Every person on board every
airliner should know that an aircraft that has been commandeered and
aimed at a populated area will be destroyed. If any of those on board
the hijacked planes had been given the choice, they would have
readily agreed. Whether that extreme response is implemented by
self-destruct devices on board or the tactical placement of
antiaircraft weapons is secondary. At the very least, one would
assume that this risk would be known and anticipated by those
assigned to defend the Pentagon. It is equally -- even more --
important to provide similar defenses for any populated metropolis.
Airliners are now potential weapons and the only possible defense is
destruction.

Every government agency assigned the duty of knowing about imminent
threats did not know. The billions of dollars expended over decades
to anticipate threats that were well known to everyone accomplished
nothing. The vaunted wisdom of our intelligence community couldn't
even prevent an assault on their own cradle of military operations.
This is absolute and utter failure. It's time to reevaluate our
entire method of gaining and employing defense intelligence. The
cold-war bureaucracy should be closed down and all of our resources
applied to the recruitment and support of traitors to tyranny, who
will risk their lives against zealous and oppressive governments
everywhere in the world. Let's offer public rewards and huge bonuses
to any individual who betrays a named tyrant. It's time for a
guerilla war, on the ground and close to the homes of those who
flaunt their autocratic power. It's time to get out of the slick
offices, to get down and dirty, with the scum of the earth.

Finally, we can no longer ignore the declarations of war by religious
fanatics and their accomplices. This is a Jihad - a holy war -
against all secular power and material wealth. It is the final,
barbaric act of a culture that uses the force and power of
governments to destroy their own people and any "satanic" culture
that discards their bloodthirsty and righteous fervor. When nations
adopt religious rules which encourage or allow any form of violent
"apostasy", their institutions and leaders should be immediately
condemned, quarantined and excluded from any interaction with the
civilized world. Individuals and governments ought to foster, support
and encourage the civil members of that society to destroy the
autocrats and their dedicated agents. This is one of those occasions
in the course of human events that require all human beings to assist
in throwing off the yokes of oppression, if not for their own sake,
then for the sake of all civil humanity. We can no longer turn our
back on those anywhere in the world that are victims of tyranny and
fanaticism. Our objective should always be liberty and our methods
should always be measured to protect the innocent and helpless. What
this tragedy teaches is that our nation is no longer an island, safe
from the insane extremes of zealots around the world. We are all
humans who must defend the rights of every human, in every nation, to
be free of tyranny and theocratic oppression. There is no other
course.

William Westmiller is a member of the Republican Liberty Caucus
Executive Committee and Executive Director of the RLCUSA-PAC His
commentaries have been published by a wide range of internet and
print publications. http://www.westmiller.com/comment/

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